ECM Briefs

Much has been said about the impact of recent amendments to the U.S Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) on corporations, but what about government? The FRCP changes, in fact, have a major impact on government agencies –now, more than ever, they face an enormous challenge to bring content under control to manage the costs and risks of litigation.

In a podcast I recorded with attorney Catherine Smith of the law firm Vedder Price, we discussed some of the complex issues involved and what government agencies can do to prepare. The latest software technologies integrating centralized records management and litigation support can help. These solutions can both manage discovery in-house as litigation arises and put in place a program of long-term, proactive management of a wide range of content -- anything from informal email to formal contracts and personnel information -- that may be subject to discovery and require legal holds so they’re not destroyed inadvertently. These technologies can help agencies provide a consistent process for determining what content to keep and what to discard.

Agencies can leverage this technology, sharpen their ability to manage information, and better respond to discovery requests by implementing several key strategies:

• Define defensible policies: Map the governing regulations and internal requirements to the process of identifying what email or document constitutes a record. Understand what is and isn’t a record according to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Agency and Statewide policies.


• Enforce policies with records management: Move policies from theory to practice with a completely automated and secure process for identifying, retaining, and destroying records.


• Monitor and control all enterprise content: Establish control over all enterprise content without changing the way users work with content—including emails and documents in SAP ERP systems, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint.


• Retain business and program records: Manage the cost-effective, physical storage of records in a compliant fashion while destroying non-records appropriately.


• Extend with litigation support: Accelerate the collection, preservation, review and coding, and production of agency records as evidence.

You can find out more by reading the press release we issued today. For more information about records management in government, visit: http://www.opentext.com/2/sol-industry/sol-gov-home.htm

This week Open Text announced a partnership with FaceTime Communications, one of the premier providers of solutions to enable safe and productive use of instant messaging and social media tools. You can read about the news here.

To follow up on this announcement, I thought it would be helpful to look at some of the records management considerations surrounding IM and social media. While companies see these tools as an effective way to increase productivity – especially among younger members of the workforce raised on MySpace and Facebook – they are also struggling to understand and manage risk, especially around content retention.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a clear trend toward courts and other governing bodies becoming more and more demanding when it comes to electronic information. There’s even a case pending where content stored in memory that has yet to be written to disk is required to be produced as a record. As for peer-to-peer and other greynets, the situation is wild and wooly at the moment because there are no clear legal precedents that govern retention requirements, liability for employee postings and so forth.

Here are few areas that enterprise should consider when it comes to these new forms of communications:

• Is the communication internal or external facing? The requirements for retaining and managing internal communications vs. external are likely to be much different. Note that external communications includes password-protected sites used by customers and partners.


• Do you have a policy governing the use of social media sites? An important first step before you can begin to implement records management and archiving software solutions is to have agreed upon policies in place. For sites like Facebook, do your policies clearly state what is appropriate behavior and what is not? For example, sharing of music files is something that may be permissible at home but is clearly outside the context of a standard business practice.


• Do you have adequate oversight? Although you may be tempted to shut down access to many social networks and peer -to-peer sites, these can also be useful business tools. If you allow them, software tools are available to help ensure company policies are being followed.

Most companies already have implemented programs around managing email, and many of the same rules apply to social media tools. But even with email, the rules and best practices are still evolving. One thing is for certain, these tools are here to stay – and so are many of the questions.

As we kick-off our LiveLinkUp 2007 Conference this week, it’s a perfect time to look at the state of the ECM market today and how much it’s changed over the last year. The outlook for ECM is certainly bright, with industry analyst forecasts for growth ranging as high as 13 percent and CIOs now viewing ECM as a key part of their information strategies. Just a few weeks ago, we announced one of our best years ever for our Fiscal 2007 ending June 30th, and this week, we are enjoying our biggest LiveLinkUp turn out ever. So to what do we owe all this good news in ECM? There are several factors driving the market, but one constant remains: Compliance.

Compliance certainly isn’t a new subject in the ECM industry. In fact, you could say it’s over-exposed as an issue in countless industry forums and articles. But compliance is still among the top concerns of CIOs and CEOs I talk to, as I discussed in a recent podcast interview with eWeek Editor Mike Vizard titled "ECM Meets Compliance".

Today, however, we are rapidly moving beyond the age of compliance for the sake of compliance. To deal with new regulatory mandates, companies have moved through a series of phases: First, they threw money and resources at the problem, then they moved to refine processes, improve controls and reduce costs. Through these first two stages, companies gained a wealth of new information about their operations. Now, these organizations want to use what they’ve learned to improve their business. This is leading to a third stage where companies are developing a more comprehensive, planned approach to managing content, together with new strategies that deliver value and insights by improving process efficiencies and productivity.

Our strategy going forward is to help companies succeed in this third stage by enabling a comprehensive ECM strategy. We’re delivering capabilities that are helping customers manage structured and unstructured content from multiple systems in combination across their organizations. With the new Open Text Content Services we announced this week, we are giving customers the most powerful capabilities available today to access, manage and leverage all business content across the enterprise.

We have the expertise, track record and partnerships to deliver true enterprise-wide ECM deployments. And as an independent company, we don’t have a larger corporate agenda aimed at moving hardware or consulting services. Instead we can focus on giving customers powerful solutions to improve information-intensive processes, reduce costs and gain more value from information….and at the same time manage those compliance challenges.

This week at our LiveLinkUp 2007 conference, there’s been a lot of talk about the future of Enterprise Content Management and what exactly it’ll look like over the next few years. We’re in the software business so we know it’s always changing, but LiveLinkUp always gives us a good opportunity to hear the perspectives of customers and partners on what they expect in ECM in the years to come.

The big picture for ECM looks good, as Open Text CEO John Shackleton points out in his blog post earlier this week, in part because more customers are looking at the big picture when thinking about ECM. This is part of what we’re discussing at LiveLinkUp this week: How companies can take a broader, enterprise-wide approach to ECM and how ECM has become a key element of the information strategies of global organizations.

But beyond talk and PowerPoints at LiveLinkUp, we are also looking at real-world examples of how companies are implementing ECM technologies to gain greater value -- reducing costs and improving processes and productivity.

Every year at LiveLinkUp, we recognize forward-looking companies at our GlobalStar Awards event. This week we announced our winner, Genzyme, a leading pharmaceutical company. Here is a summary of this year’s winner and finalists:

GlobalStar Enterprise Award Winner

Genzyme
Genzyme implemented a Livelink ECM-based solution supporting global content management connecting separate operational silos.

Finalists

T-Systems – Runner-up
More than 40,000 users have access to T-System’s “My Workroom” – a Livelink ECM –based project and document management system.

European Court of Human Rights – Runner-up
European Court of Human Rights implemented a Web-based knowledge document and case management mission critical system that supports over 700 internal users and millions of external users world-wide.

46th Test Wing, Eglin AFB, U.S. Air Force – Runner-up
46th Test Wing, Eglin AFB, U.S. Air Force implemented a Livelink ECM-based process that supports the coordination, file and archive of Technical Data Packages, core documents that describe the content and composition of each munition and provide storing and handling instructions.

bioMérieux
bioMérieux harmonized the CAPA process using Livelink workflow technology into one global rollout of a business critical workflow, while completing the solution within three months and on budget.

Central Arizona Project
Central Arizona Project implemented a Livelink ECM document management system and records management module that allows the company to put in controls to better manage use, accessibility and retention of its official business records.

Developers Diversified Realty
Developers Diversified Realty implemented a Livelink ECM platform that supports lease document management, accounts payable processes, JD Edwards integration, creation of marketing materials, as well as enterprise-wide document management.

Salford City Council
Salford City Council has 100% e-enablement in terms of its service delivery and was voted one of the U.K.’s top 4 council Websites for its Web Content Management implementation.

Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council
Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council has a Livelink ECM archive solution that supports increased organizational efficiency and provides council residents with better services at no extra cost in terms of additional taxes or user fees.

Transamerica Reinsurance
Transamerica Reinsurance implemented a Livelink ECM-based document management solution for SOX, decontrol processes, confidential client pricing assumption and finalized deal information.

Tronox
Tronox has a Contract Lifecycle Management solution which includes automatic obligation tracking, improved ability to optimize contractual relationships with third-parties that comply with Tronox’s policies.